Auction Gets No Takers For Fafnir Plant

NEW BRITAIN — The sign in the window of the rusting, cavernous Fafnir Bearing plant Wednesday morning instructed potential bidders to line up to receive a bid number.

It was a hopeful gesture.

"This is the future of New Britain!" a nattily dressed auctioneer bellowed at the small group gathered about noon at one end of the plant's 8 acres of empty, cracking parking lots. "You have an area that is on the rise, on the uptrend, not on the downtrend!"

The crowd stared stonily at him. He opened the bidding.

"Thank you for your offers. How much? Who will give me a million?"

Silence.

"OK, who will give me $2 million?" he asked. "I can't have an auction without an opening bid. Anyone at all. Anyone at all. Anyone at all."

That was the most offered Wednesday for the empty 598,755-square-foot building now home to dozens of pigeons and two lonely security guards.

The state landscape is spotted with such massive relics of the golden age of manufacturing. In Bristol, Manchester, Newington, East Hartford, they sit, white elephants looking for a new life, said Gerald Yates, senior market analyst at The Farley Co.

The city plant once boiled over with more than a thousand workers who made bearings that helped power airplanes, spaceships, washing machines, vacuums and many other devices. Many workers lived in the blocks and blocks of tightly packed apartment buildings near the plant, surrounding the city's no-longer-bustling Broad Street.

The plant has been for sale since it was idled in December 1988, when the Torrington Co. moved operations to North Carolina, Georgia and other sites. In 1991, the city plant was assessed for $2.6 million. Torrington Co. bought the property for $4 million in 1985.

Stanley Sternal, 64, a city resident who worked as a machine operator at the plant for 15 years, stood by silently, watching the auctioneer struggle.

"I feel very sorry," he said, braving the chill wind in a tweed coat, cap and worn flannel shirt. "We used to have 10 big factories in New Britain. Fafnir was one of the best in Connecticut."